LA PASIÓN ESCLAVA

Nuria Godón, Ph.D, Associate Professor of Spanish and co-editor of Transitions: Journal of Franco-Iberian Studies published a new book, La Pasión Esclava. It addresses the masochistic discursivity of the Nineteenth Century Spanish masterpiece La Regenta (1884–1885) by Leopoldo Alas (Clarín) as a subversive strategy of dominance and submission through which the foundations of liberal thinking on education, agency, and freedom of the modern subject are refuted. Nuria Godón shows how La Regenta challenges the models of partnership in modern society by displaying a reformulation of the masochist contract that parodies the marital contract, satirizes Rousseau’s social contract, and places the wheels of Krause’s educational machine under scrutiny.

 According to Lou Charnon-Deutsch (Stony Brook University): 

"La pasión esclava is the most important work on La Regenta to appear in recent years. Illuminating, superbly documented and stimulating, it offers a tightly argued analysis of the way La Regenta 's masochistic alliances defy gender roles, parody matrimonial contracts and offer the heroine, Ana Ozores, an alternative to the prison of sexual dissatisfaction of her marriage. Not since Louise Kaplan's study of perversions in Madame Bovary have we had such a comprehensive picture of the way masochism functions in a literary text from a triple perspective that includes clinical-historical, cultural, and literary dimensions. Although it deals in depth with complex psychoanalytic theory its accessible prose and methodical explanations make it available even to readers unfamiliar with the topic of masochism."